PE2_iMovie

My favorite exercises are #6 Working with Effects and #7 Working with Audio. My knowledge base was enhanced within these two areas. How to use varying effects to enhance your video and keep it looking professional. I especially liked the section on how to create green (blue) screen effects and how to correctly create a movie trailer.

Working with audio was very interesting. Especially how you can, not only adjust the levels for the audio but how you can replace audio on specific clips, how you can extract audio and even edit video clips to the beat of the music.

PE1_iMovie

I went to Lynda.com and took the beginner iMovie `11 Essential Training. The duration of  the training is 03:28:00. The way that the exercise files are organized made the time pass rather quickly. I was able to view the entire course over the course of two evenings. The author, Garrick Chow was excellent. He gave clear and precise instructions. 

Garrick covered everything from making sure you had the latest version of iMovie, how to import video from whatever source you used, all the way to how to finalize your project once it is completed. I was able to discover easier ways to manipulate, organize, and how to edit the video clips. He provided the same video files that he used in the exercises so that there is an opportunity to work along with him. He didn’t leave anything out, except perhaps how to add voice / audio to the movie trailers. Overall, I give it two thumbs up!

BP4_TypingWeb

One of the challenges that university students face is that many of them do not know how to type. This is one of the frustrations that they have when they learn they have to write research papers or reports. What we often get are papers filled with typing and other errors. It is my feeling that students need to know how to type and type correctly. If we want students to use computers and the Web 2.0 tools they need to know how to type. In searching through the Web 2.0 tools I found TypingWeb.com and I like it.

TypingWeb: http://www.typingweb.com/ is a free online typing tutor. On this site you can learn how to type by following lessons. The site contains beginners, intermediate, and advanced courses, as well as, specialty and premium lessons. You can keep up with the latest headline news as you practice your typing skills in the “News Headline Exercises” lesson. As you type the site tracks which keys you have problems with and there is a section where you can work to improve these keys. Once you have completed the lessons you can take the online test to receive a typing certificate that you can print out. The Typing Institute of America officially authorizes the certificates for TypingWeb.com

The TypingWeb Teacher Portal is also a free online account. The Teacher Portal allows you as a teacher to manage your students’ progress, track their lessons and you can report on your students all within this portal. You can add students and group them into classrooms. You can link students who are already had a TypingWeb account with your teacher portal. The Teacher Portal allows you to monitor the progress of each student and track that students’ individual improvement. Graphs can be created to show the levels of improvement in net speed, gross speed, and accuracy. You can run reports using the Score section of the portal and data can also be exported.

 

TypingWeb.com has a blog with links to social networking sites.

The site also has various games that help you improve your typing skills, accuracy, and speed. I only played a few of the games and I found them entertaining and useful. This website can be used by elementary as well as university students. Like other sites you can pay for upgrades if you like.

 I found this Web 2.0 tool to be very user friendly and it’s free. 

BP6_Link to another's Blog

Follow this link to my comment on Mike's Blog.

BP5_Link to another's Blog

Follow this link to my comment on Jennifer's blog.

BP3_iGoogleScreenShots

BP2_Prezi

I want to introduce you to a Web 2.0 tool that I was introduced to earlier this year, Prezi. Prezi is a presentation tool and the site http://www.prezi.com contains all of the information and tutorials one needs in order to create excellent presentations. Prezi is very easy to use. I was able to learn and create a prezi presentation for my class in one evening.  Let me just relate to you some of the aspects of Prezi.  

Prezi Desktop: You can create you presentation, edit and show your presentation on your computer without having Internet access. You don’t have to worry about the size of your presentation either, it can be as large as you want and you can store the content on your computer. Prezi saves your work automatically as you create and edit your presentation. Prezi has a native file format, .pez, so you can send and transfer your prezis as .pez files.

When you create a presentation in Prezi there are no slides as in PowerPoint. You work on one large whiteboard and all of your information, images, video clips can be place anywhere on the whiteboard. You can move, scale, rotate, zoom, and select the path in which you want your presentation viewed.

You can also create frames to group related Information and images. This is an excellent feature because one side effect of prezi is dizziness. Going from one path to the next within your presentation can cause your viewer to become dizzy so to avoid this you use frames to group information. 

Our CBR team T.I.M.E.S. (Teachers Interested in Motivating and Engaging Students) used another feature of Prezi to create one of our collaborative projects, Prezi Meeting. We thanked our team member Michelle for introducing this feature to us. In Prezi Meeting you can edit and show prezis with up to nine other users.

There are six members in our group. Michelle generated the link and sent it to us. We were also in iChat so we were able to talk to each other and actually collaborate on and work on our presentation in real time. Each person appeared on the prezi screen with his or her names on a little bubble person. (I was concerned because I didn’t see my bubble person but apparently you don’t get to see yourself.) We were able to complete the content of our presentation in a couple of hours in one evening.  After that we each created our individual video clips that Michelle later added to our frames in prezi. Once completed Shawn created a ScreenFlow video of our prezi and posted it for our instructor to view.

This aspect of prezi allows real-time editing and you can work together from anywhere in without having to be in the same room, city, or time zone.

You can also Add Audio. (I have not as yet created one using the audio feature.) “You can use the phone, Skype, or other application to add audio to any Prezi Meeting session. You don't need any additional web conferencing tools to work together ― just add audio and you're ready to go.”

Those of us you have already created numerous PowerPoint or KeyNote presentations can import and “Prezify” our slides. Change the slides to PDFs and import them into Prezi. You can use frames to isolate content from your slides into groups. You and also use frames to isolate and zoom into specific details on slides.

Another aspect of Prezi is that it is global. It is used by people in various countries around the world, Japan, Sweden, etc. You can even use Prezi on your iPhone and iPad.

The Prezi Community (http://prezi.com/community/) includes:

Prezi Blog

            Prezi on Facebook

            @prezi on Twitter

            Flickr

            Prezi groups on LinkedIn

            Prezi on YouTube

Discussion forum where they discuss the features, functions, new ideas, and issues with Prezi.

I have already begun to introduce Prezi to my students and have encouraged them to investigate the tool for themselves. I have also introduced Prezi to my colleagues and they are excited to investigate the tool as well.

Hopefully, you have been inspired to explore this Web 2.0 tool. I will continue my exploration of Web 2.0 tools and share my findings with you in my next entry. See you soon! Now go get Prezified!